• Imaging & Detector Industry Report

    Narragansett Imaging is born; eMagin 'in the money'; NREL awards to boost research into thin-film solar cells...
    Nov. 1, 2001
    3 min read

    Narragansett Imaging is born
    Narragansett Imaging (Slatersville, RI) has been formed to develop and manufacture camera modules for advanced digital imaging. The company's charge-coupled device and soon-to-be-announced complementary metal oxide semiconductor-based modules will be used for biometrics, traffic control, film scanning, and other applications. Narragansett Imaging is part of Business Creation an 18-year-old company based in Hoofdorp, The Netherlands. Business Creation formed Narragansett Imaging by acquiring the operation once held by Philips Corp. in Slatersville, RI. The operation will continue at its present location and will continue to manufacture current products, including camera tubes, while expanding its digital-imaging module activity.

    eMagin 'in the money'
    eMagin Corp. (Hopewell Junction, NY), a developer of organic light-emitting diode-on-silicon microdisplay technology, and SK Corp. (Seoul, Korea), a flagship company of SK Group, Korea's third-largest conglomerate, have announced a strategic investment by SK Corp. in eMagin. Under the agreement, SK invested an initial $3 million in eMagin in the form of convertible notes and other securities issued by eMagin. SK is considering a follow-up investment of $7 million, based on certain target events and final negotiation of terms.

    NREL awards to boost research into thin-film solar cells
    The US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL; Golden, CO) is funding 19 universities and 14 commercial entities with $40 million for R&D into thin-film photovoltaic cells. The funds will be awarded under DOE's National Center for Photovoltaics' Thin Film Photovoltaics Partnership Program (formed in 1993), which is responsible for bringing about significant technical progress in solar electricity. Recipients of the funding range from BP Solar (Toano, VA and Fairfield, CA) to the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA). National research teams formed as a result of the NREL awards will perform collaborative research on key research problems. The teams consist of university, industry, and NREL researchers. The actual number of awards and their amounts will depend on the final budget available in the Energy Department's fiscal year 2002 budget. Many of the awards are cost-shared, with recipients contributing a total of $13 million toward the effort.

    W. M. Keck Foundation fuels astronomy imaging project
    The Los Angeles-based W. M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations interested in engineering, science, and medical advancement, recently awarded Boston University's (Boston, MA) astronomy department a $500,000 grant to develop MIMIR, a powerful, state-of-the-art, widefield imaging spectrometer and polarimeter. When completed in the spring of 2002, MIMIR will enable researchers at Boston University, under a partnership with the Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, AZ), to undertake large, infrared surveys of magnetic fields in space.

    DisplaySearch predicts decline
    DisplaySearch (Austin, TX), a flat-panel-display market research firm, has reported that because of lower notebook personal-computer demand and continued capacity investments, thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) prices are not expected to rise until fourth quarter 2002. A growing number of Japanese TFT LCD manufacturers are reducing their focus on large-area markets and thus have fallen out of the number-one position in large-area TFT LCD market share for the first time in the second quarter of 2001.

    Also in the news . . .
    Omron Electronics LLC (Schaumberg, IL) has formed a partnership with CCS America Inc. (Waltham, MA) to develop lighting for machine-vision applications. . . . Photon Vision Systems Inc. (Cortland, NY) has appointed SVS-VISTEK (Seefeld, Germany) as the German distributor of its CMOS sensors. . . . Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY) announced that since company scientists developed OLEDs in 1987, more than 80 companies and universities around the world have explored the potential of the technology. . . . E-Ink Corp. (Cambridge, MA) has opened a 9500-sq-ft microelectronics facility to develop and make flexible transistors for displays.

    John Wallace

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